Rebecca Watches Breathless

God… Imagine dating another Rebecca… I’ve always liked being the only Rebecca in the room. And what if she went by Becky? I’ve always hated that name and cringe when I hear it.

Are people ever turned off by potential lovers’ names? Like, you name a child, and it is something very deliberate. You would never dream of naming your son Luke because he is the boy who made it necessary to ban dodgeball from your school district’s gym curriculum*, but would you date and eventually marry a Luke? Or does it not matter because after spending one day with this new Luke you lose space in your memory for the old one. (That dodgeball story is not over… See the footnote.)

I’ve started to be a little more conscious now, when I leave a message on somebody’s voicemail. Instead of saying “Hey, it’s Rebecca” I almost want to say “Hey, it’s Rebecca Martin” because I figure they must be friends with another Rebecca by now.

Malia is just a regular kid. She plays on the stairs like everyone at PS8 even when the world’s attention is on her and her father. This must be an emotional journey no one else has ever known. They have the prayers and exhausted dreams of millions of people he’ll never meet.

Imagine being a commercial airline pilot and looking down the nose of your plane and having to decide where to preform a crash landing. You see the open expanse of Teterborough (but that’s too far away), the jagged fragility of Manhattan (obviously out of the question), and the smooth, dirty Hudson River.

Imagine this was any other plane you’ve ever been on, in terms of your companions in flight.

The couple that does it in the bathroom

The man who brings an entire pizza from the food court as his carry-on item.

The woman who had to purchase two tickets because she couldn’t fit into one seat

They’re all there with you when you die in a plane crash.**

Except not today with Sully at the healm. Instead, these are the people with whom you will be thrown another curveball. Water. And this water is cold. In five minutes you could be struck with hypothermia. —

I’m alive! I can walk! Except I’ve been plucked from the cushioned sky and dropped into the frigid water of the Hudson River. I couldn’t get a break? You crash in a field, and at least you may have the chance to run away from the burning plane. What if I hadn’t learned to swim on that summer vacation? Who knows? I didn’t even pack my bathing suit to sit in the Jacuzzi at the Holiday Inn. I definitely wasn’t expecting my business trip to end with a doggy paddle in my Anne Kline suit.

—

Ok. I’ve gone on a few tangents. I’ll watch Breathless next.

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*Luke is the son of a very famous actor who lived in my town. In 3rd grade, my gym class played dodgeball against another class. Cage Match! Luke was in the other class and by the end of the game our old-school nerf balls were looked pretty ragged. I’m not sure of the specifics of the game (How many players were left? Had I gotten anyone out? Did I really suck at dodgeball?) but at one point, I suppose the last seconds of the game, Luke cocked back and threw a broken ball at my face and I got nerf crumblies in my eye. That dodgeball game was the last one my school district ever played. I know no one really plays dodgeball any more, but I think without my incident we could have gotten a few more good years of this American gym institution.

**How many people have actually gotten a distress call from an airfone, and has this is the last memory of their loved one’s voice? Is that a statistic somewhere?